Salad for Lunch

I'm packing a salad to lunch tomorrow, but cos it's something I haphazardly threw together (and was too lazy to head to the supermarket near my haus) I'm not too excited about it. Instead I'm reminiscing of this totz yumz salad I made a few weeks (maybe months) back! Man it was yummy. I was super excited about making it because back then I'd been having this insane craving for salad. Who craves salads anyway? Must have been all my OL (office lady) friends in the CBD instagramming their salad lunches, but because my office only has the requisite mixed rice stalls and fish soup stalls, well, I had to make my own to bring to work. I was inspired by this recipe here from 101 cookbooks, a really cool blog with great healthy recipes and pretty photos, but so damned healthy I feel a bit sorry for the author. I wonder if she misses eating fried chicken and cheesy pasta... 

The point is that she talks about how her salad holds up through the day and that's exactly what I was looking for in making a salad to bring to work-- it needs to stay crisp and fresh, but yet have enough goodies in it to make me stay full. 

I used mostly organic produce for my salad, except the avocadoes, olives and mushrooms, all of which are harder to get them organic in Singapore. I used a mix of baby kale, romaine leaves, broccoli heads, sliced celery and carrots, plus organic chickpeas which were cute and tiny!

As for the salad dressing, this one's a keeper! My mom taught me how to make her amazing salad sauce years ago but that one is an olive-oil-balsamic-vinegar-secret-ingredient-mix that can sometimes be a little boring, seeing as how I've been having it for yeaaaaaars, and I've always had a thing for creamy salad dressing anyway. I guess I'll start alternating between them!

Miso Dressing:

1 large clove garlic, smashed in a pestle and mortar
1 tablespoon white miso (brown miso is fine too)
1 tablespoon mirin
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar or any other light vinegar
pinch of ground cumin
1/3 cup plain yoghurt

The original recipe called for heavy cream but it's salad! How can I put heavy cream into a salad?! If I had sour cream I would have substituted with it but I just added a little more yoghurt. Eugh so easy and delicious wehhh I wish I was having this for lunch tomorrow!! 

Tada isn't that a beauty. I also added in some penne, about a handful just cos I love my carbs. And of course some toasted pinenuts because they are delicious. Sliced in the avocado just after I tossed it so it wouldn't become avo-mash. 

Clearly I overestimated the size of my tupperware... 

Ok now I'll have to make this again soon. jtong cooks yall! 

Of Rocks and Mountains

"Oh what are men compared to rocks and mountains!" Tis a line I always remember from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Truly nothing, even if I doubt the great lady herself had ever been to China. More photos! This truly is a disgusting backlog, clearly not cut out to be a blogger. It turns out life is more exciting than I think it is. 

So one of the things unique to Lijiang and its native Naxi tribe is it's embroidery schools. They are kept within the family, and the skill is mostly imparted to relatives (nieces, daughters, daughters-in-law, cousins etc). In Naxi culture, it is the woman who earns the upkeep! Not really a yay for equality because the men just spend their afternoons drinking tea (or liquor) and playing chinese chess..... 

So one must most definitely go to see an embroidery school, when one is in Lijiang! They truly are amazing works of art, so much patience! Some of the more intricate ones take up to 700 days to complete, quite insane! 

Look how the fishes sorta come alive! The bright parts are where the silk embroidery has been done. At the school we went to, they had a whole lot of little dogs which were once stray but now guard the house (or laze about) in exchange for food and pats. 

TEEHEE me when I'm happiest, surrounded by furry little dusty dogs. 

Another tourist destination: Tiger Leaping Gorge. Apparently a hunter was chasing a tiger and it leapt across the gorge onto that rock and onto the other side of the river, which you can see by the tiny humans on the other side, is pretty damn wide. 

Food! Cooked by the boy in the blue jacket! I saw boy because he could not have been more than 16 years old but he had pretty legit cooking skills. I hang my head in shame. 

Moar food! This one was one of my faveee meals! It's called Guo Qiao Mian (or Cross Bridge Noodles), and is light and not too oily (although look at that soup). First, according to what you order, they serve you a plate of condiments and a bowl of noodles. Usually comes with peavine, ham slices, quail's egg, beancurd skin, pickled veggies and some meat like chicken etc. Then later on a big boiling claypot of soup arrives! You're supposed to throw the noodles into the boiling soup, followed by all the other condiments and then eat it all. It was super delish, need to try to recreate this dish! 

Some Peacock Dance show, rather entertaining. Granted, I did fall asleep once but only because I was tired. Then off to the Stone Forest, a forest made up of limestone formations. Naturally, being the civilised people that we are, we spent the entire time there having fun with the topography. 

Teehee! Daddytong says hi. 

The End. 

The Great Singapore Cupcake Hunt

Singapore is always going through food fads, and the current one that is slowly but surely gaining momentum is cupcakes! Forget about donuts (pshhh so 2009) or bubble tea, cupcakes have always been my favourite. What's not to love about single-serve cakes in pretty paper cups, complete with a good dollop of icing? There are a gabillion ways to make really good cupcakes, but that's the best part! It's all about the variety, and the infinitesimal possibilities between cake and icing flavours. The greatest thing about cupcakes is that if you don't want to leave your house you can even whip up your own batch with a basic list of things you have in the pantry. Flour, sugar, eggs, milk, butter, and some cocoa powder or vanilla essence and you're good to go.

But my favourite cupcakes so far are from Trophy Cupcakes, a little specialty cupcake store in Seattle. I used to walk down this treacherous slope from my dorm to the U.Vill just to get me a cupcake ( although walking down was the easy part, it was the walking back up that I always dreaded). Their triple chocolate and salted caramel cupcakes are the best EVER. I torture myself constantly by going to their facebook page and looking at all the special flavours, like raspberry lemon, or magarita with tequila lime buttercream, or lemon meringue, or smores. The list never ends. But sadly I'm back in Singapore for good, so I guess I'll have to go on a cupcake hunt right here in my own city (hehehhehe yayyy!) 

When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Lemon Sorbet

Last week was a pretty stressful week for me, to be honest. Worried about life, work, and even about the upcoming vacation, weirdly. I didn't really plan much on the weekend, so I was left to mope about the house. Imagine how thankful I was when Yvr texted me "Wanna make icecream today?!" (or something like that), and I spent my sunday afternoon at her home getting bitten alive by mozzies while attempting to make icecream. Our first attempt at using her sister's icecream machine was on Valentine's, when I cooked dinner. She lugged it over to my place, and we spent a total of two tedious hours making the custard and hoping for the best outcome of Vanilla Icecream, even though she bought pure cream instead of the required heavy cream. My friend, the domestic goddess. It ended up being a gooey lunk of grossness, and after a mouthful, tossed it straight into the bin.

This time around, we settled for something much less complicated-- Lemon Sorbet!! I googled for lemon sorbet, and decided upon this recipe, which only calls for sugar, carbonated water, water, and lemons. Lots of others ask for egg white as well, as an emulsifier, but I turn queasy at the thought of putting a raw egg white into something I wasn't going to heat up. The steps were super simple, and after popping it into the icecream machine, we sat around for about an hour, playing draw something with each other (me on my ipad and she on her galaxy), and worriedly checked on the churning mass of ice every 10 minutes. When it came out it was kinda like an icy, or a slurpee, and we panicked and ate half of it because we thought it would melt into a lemon syrup. Then yvr's sister comes along and says in a deadpan voice "you are supposed to freeze it after you take it out of the machine..." OH. We totally knew that. Reading the icecream machine instructions the next time.

Hong Kong Travelogue

Happy 2012! These are so outdated but I still want to share them because they are from my Mother's big birthday celebration last year in November. The whole family flew up to Hong Kong and even her close friends came along for a few days of merry-making, shopping and eating all the yummy things Hong Kong has to offer, especially the excellence that is Joel Robuchon!!! Not to mention the best noodles, beef brisket and dumplings one will ever find. There's so much to be grateful for in 2011, but may the coming year shine brighter than the last.